About Eric

ERIC KIRSCH is a former Captain in the United States Marine Corps who served multiple combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant after graduating with honors from The Citadel in 2004, Kirsch served in Iraq as Human Intelligence Exploitation Team (HET) Officer in Charge before being selected for further training at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA), earning the title of Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in 2009. Since his honorable discharge in 2012, Kirsch has served as an Offensive Counterintelligence Operations instructor at JCITA; as a civilian Special Agent with NCIS; and as a civilian Advisor to the American Government and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is the founder and CEO of Torchlight USA.

This blog is record of our journey. I hope you enjoy!

~Eric

Fight of The Intruder: The Incredible Tale of A6 Lizard 515

Lt. Mark Baden and Lt. Keith Gallagher, Pilot and NFO of Intruder “Lizard 515” experienced a partial ejection from the aircraft. Both the crew members released their accounts of the mishap to Approach Magazine in November 1991:

Gallagher himself explains: “Murphy’s Law says, “Whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it.” (And, of course, we all know that Murphy was an aviator). Fortunately for me, however, he failed to follow through. On my 26th birthday I was blindsided by a piece of bad luck the size of Texas that should have killed me. Luckily, it was followed immediately by a whole slew of miracles that allowed me to be around for my 27th. We were the overhead tanker, one third of the way through cruise, making circles in the sky. Although the tanker pattern can be pretty boring midway through the cycle, we were alert and maintaining a good lookout doctrine because our airwing had a midair less than a week before, and we did not want to repeat.”

After the third fuel update call Lizard 515 decided that the left outboard fuel drop was going to require a little help and as recommended by the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization program (NATOPS), NATOPS is responsible for all rules and regulations governing safe and correct operation of all naval aircraft. The pilot applied positive and negative Gs to force the release valve open.
As explained by Gallagher, when the pilot moved the stick forward “I felt the familiar sensation of negative “G”, and then something strange happened: my head touched the canopy. For a brief moment I thought that I had failed to tighten my lap belts, but I knew that wasn’t true. Before I could complete that thought, there was a loud bang, followed by wind, noise, disorientation and more wind, wind, wind. Confusion reigned in my mind as I was forced back against my seat, head against the headrest, arms out behind me, the wind roaring in my head, pounding against my body.

“Did the canopy blow off? Did I eject? Did my windscreen implode?” All of these questions occurred to me amidst the pandemonium in my mind and over my body. These questions were quickly answered, and replaced by a thousand more, as I looked down and saw a sight that I will never forget: the top of the canopy, close enough to touch, and through the canopy I could see the top of my pilot’s helmet. It took a few moments for this image to sink into my suddenly overloaded brain. This was worse than I ever could have imagined…I was sitting on top of a flying A-6”

The sensations experienced by Gallagher during this wild ride were extreme: “I couldn’t breathe. My helmet and mask had ripped off my head, and without them, the full force of the wind was hitting me square in the face. It was like trying to drink through a fire hose. I couldn’t seem to get a breath of air amidst the wind. My arms were dragging along behind me until I managed to pull both of them into my chest and hold them there.” While he was still trying to breathe, Gallagher thought that Baden would never have tried to land and he decided to start the ejection sequence once again: “I grabbed the lower handle with both hands and pulled-it wouldn’t budge. With a little more panic induced strength I tried again, but to no avail. The handle was not going to move. I attempted to reach the upper handle but the wind prevented me from getting a hand on it. As a matter of fact, all that I could do was hold my arms into my chest. If either of them slid out into the wind stream, they immediately flailed out behind me, and that was definitely not good.”

Baden switched to the UHF frequency preset on Channel 6 and said “Boss (the Air Boss is the Naval Officer who has to rule the flight deck), this is 515. My BN has partially ejected. I need an emergency pull-forward!” The Boss replied: “Bring it on in.” At this point Baden looked at his BN’s legs still moving and understood that Gallagher was not dead. So when the Boss came up and asked if the BN was still with the aircraft, Baden replied “Only his legs are still inside the cockpit.” Fortunately, the Boss understood what Baden meant and asked him if he was heading to the aircraft carrier for landing. When Baden confirmed he was returning to “homeplate,” the Boss told him that the aircraft carrier was ready to recover Lizard 515.

Gallagher’s conditions were dire: “The wind had become physically and emotionally overwhelming. It pounded against my face and body like a huge wall of water that wouldn’t stop. The roaring in my ears confused me, the pressure in my mouth prevented me from breathing, and the pounding on my eyes kept me from seeing. Time had lost all meaning. For all I knew, I could have been sitting there for seconds or for hours. I was suffocating, and I couldn’t seem to get a breath. I wish I could say that my last thoughts were of my wife, but as I felt myself blacking out, all I said was, “I don’t want to die.”

Lizard 515 performed an urgent landing upon the USS Abraham Lincoln; “I had no intention of passing up any “perfectly good wires.” I touched down short of the 1-wire (the perfect carrier landing is the 3rd of 4 wires) and sucked the throttles to idle. The canopy shards directly in front of the BN’s chest looked like a butcher’s knife collection. I was very concerned that the deceleration of the trap was going to throw him into the jagged edge of the canopy.”

After the landing, when Lizard 515 came to an agonizing halt, Lt Gallagher coughed blood, forced a smile then asked: “Am I on the flight deck?”

Fly Navy.

-EGK

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eric

Eric graduated with honors in 2004 from the The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA. He was then commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps the same year, completed multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Counterintelligence / Human Source Intelligence Officer and later as a Case Officer and Active Duty Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Eric honorably discharged as a Captain after 8 years’ service in 2012.

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About Eric

ERIC KIRSCH is a former Captain in the United States Marine Corps who served multiple combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant after graduating with honors from The Citadel in 2004, Kirsch served in Iraq as Human Intelligence Exploitation Team (HET) Officer in Charge before being selected for further training at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA), earning the title of Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in 2009. Since his honorable discharge in 2012, Kirsch has served as an Offensive Counterintelligence Operations instructor at JCITA; as a civilian Special Agent with NCIS; and as a civilian Advisor to the American Government and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is the founder and CEO of Torchlight USA.